Less religious countries ‘tend to get richer’ than God-fearing societies

Countries which shift away from belief in God see higher economic growth than countries where religious belief has remained high, a study has found.

The find could help to explain why some of the most religious societies on Earth are the poorest.

The researchers from the University of Bristol analysed statistics relating to religious belief against GDP across countries around the world.

The researchers found that drops in religious belief tended to come before a surge in economic growth, according to The Independent.

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The findings show that wealth itself is not the reason that societies become less religious, the researchers say.

Lead author Damian Ruck of the University of Bristol said, ‘Our findings show that secularisation precedes economic development and not the other way around.

‘However, we suspect the relationship is not directly causal. We noticed that secularisation only leads to economic development when it is accompanied by a greater respect for individual rights.’

This doesn’t necessarily mean that secularisation caused economic development, since both changes could have been caused by some third factor with different time lags, but at least we can rule out economic growth as the cause of secularization in the past.’